School girl, Source https://www.flickr.com, Author elmimmo, (CC Attribution 2.0 Generic)
WARNING: Graphic Images
“Fathers, do not provoke your children, lest they become discouraged” (Col. 3: 21).
My father helped uncounted strangers. He gave directions, fixed tires, delivered groceries, shared tools, shoveled driveways. He lent money that went unreturned. He cleared debris, cut down unwanted tree limbs, and cleaned the home of one elderly man for years.
My father, also, molested me [1]. I have struggled with the scars of the incest my entire life. My mother never knew about the molestation. At least, I never told her. Of course, we were trained early on to protect her.
Why stir things up now? I am after all a grown woman. My father has been dead for many years. I have — I think — come to terms with my past and my pain, perhaps even forgiven him.
Compartmentalization
Yet certain questions haunt me. Why did this happen? Did narcissism perhaps play a role [2]? How can the disparate aspects of my father’s personality be reconciled? Admittedly, child molesters are expert at compartmentalization [3][4]. Why then can I not break free?
Onset
People who have just learned of the incest will — after a distressed pause — often ask how it first began. That is not a question I can answer definitively. I cannot recall the first time. I simply do not remember a period when the incest was not a part of my reality.
They say children begin to form coherent memories around the age of two. As abhorrent as the thought may be to anyone concerned for the welfare of children, infants can be molested. But if the incest had been happening as early as that to me, the subsequent rage would have been so monumental as to destroy me.
My best guess is that the molestation started the summer I was four. That was the summer my younger sister was born.
Our mother had a difficult pregnancy. The house was in turmoil because my father and grandfather had decided to install a bathtub. I remember the smell of plaster and the vacant feel of the house while my mother was hospitalized for the delivery.
Did her absence create opportunity for my father? Did it generate some unnamed anxiety he chose this way to ease?
Acting Out
Certainly I was acting out sexually by the second grade, a sure sign I was being molested.
Since I attended a parochial grammar school, we wore uniforms, the skirts a sturdy navy serge. Generally a model student, I invented a game which involved the girls pulling up one another’s skirts. This caused a great deal of uproar and embarrassment.
The girls in my class learned to sit rigidly on alert, their skirts tucked tightly beneath their thighs to guard against surprise attacks. Unfortunately, I was at a loss how to prevent the more sinister attacks taking place at home.
Though I could not say why I found the skirt activity compelling, I did not need to engage in the behavior to satisfy any sense of curiosity on my part. I had by the second grade long known where babies come from, and seen my father naked at close quarters.
He emphasized that this was for my own good; was to compensate for the fact that he had been deprived of anatomic knowledge as a boy. His sexual instruction was for my benefit. So he maintained very nearly until his death.
Not that my teachers took notice back then. Reporting by educators of abuse suspicions did not become mandatory until 1974.
I was ordinarily, in fact, teacher’s pet. I enjoyed school, therefore, did well. The fact that — despite this — I was being treated by my father as very nearly mentally impaired set up an internal dichotomy it took decades to resolve. Continue reading
A Voice Reclaimed, Surviving Child Abuse and More 